Meditation Sounds

Many people find the use of mantras to be a great benefit, and there are well-established schools promoting this system. Every TM student is given a specific mantra to use for the entirety of their practice. Over the years, TM has become quite visible in the mainstream media due to such notable and devoted practitioners as David Lynch, Paul McCartney and Jerry Seinfeld.

Studies from the UK show that we often have a kind of cathartic reflection to depressing music that feels great in the long run. For thousands of years, Buddhist meditators have known the effects of an activated default mode network as “mind wandering,” and the tools to transcend it are built into the meditation system. Most meditation traditions assume the answer to this question is yes. They work with flow as a tool by utilizing meditative states called “jhana,” which fulfill the criteria for the flow states that music listening and playing can generate. As the great sages of southeast Asia have been telling us since the Axial Age, the gateway to happiness is opened when we can let go of our sense of self and the neurosis that comes with it.

These are the sounds familiar to anyone who has tried using meditation apps on their phones. It's ambient sound and new-age music that has become very synonymous to the Mindfulness practice. I live in a city so there mind relaxing is always street noise. I've tried white noise but it doesn't do much, so I usually listen to Ravi Shankar to block out the sounds of the city. Those ragas are meant to induce specific mental states and I feel like it helps.

Meditation teachers often suggest focusing on breath, and focusing on music can also be effective for the same purpose. It can help to protect us from the often negative thoughts that can creep into our mind without us watching. Lots of people believe music must be categorized as spiritual in order for the result of listening to be spiritual. If you have this preconception, meditating with anything other than kirtan, chanting, new age, sacred music, binaural beats etc. would seem less productive. If you enjoy these styles of music, then by all means, practice with them! You need to be doing whatever encourages and supports you in the challenging task of maintaining a meditation practice.

Our society places a high value on politeness, and not saying "thank you" to someone who holds the door open can, at first, be quite a shock to the system. When I let go of the banter, however, I notice the incessant stream of chatter inside my head. By quieting externally, I gain the space to begin quieting internally. What i listen to is the silence that lies beneath the sounds and concentrate on that. All sound is born in silance, live in silance and die in silance, to hear the silance for me is to connect to a deeper and more true form of energy and state of being.